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Situation
The Air
Force's Air Education and Training Command (AETC) needed
a reliable and secure way to deliver emergency threat
notifications to personnel at its thirteen bases.
Notifications can range from Force Protection Conditions
(FPCONs) and antiterrorism warnings to natural disaster
alerts such as an approaching tornado. AETC wanted
personnel to know about threats and have instructions
for action as quickly as possible after a threat is
identified - whether personnel are outdoors or inside
sound-proof buildings and bunkers. Meeting this
mission-critical alerting need allowed AETC to address
Air Force Headquarters' mandate AFI 10-2501 for Full
Spectrum Threat Response (FSTR) Operations Readiness.
AETC required a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)
network alerting solution to complement its telephony
and PA system alerts. The system would ensure anyone
connected to the network would be notified within a
single minute of an alert being sent out. The
network-centric system also needed to include provisions
for secure communication, authentication and encryption
using DoD and industry-standard PKI-encryption
technologies.
Solution
Delivered
AETC selected AtHoc
IWSAlertsT to fulfill this need. AtHoc IWSAlerts sends
alerts to all computers connected to bases' networks
whenever a threat is identified. The alerts, in the form
of pop-up windows accompanied by an audio alarm,
describe the potential threat, categorize the threat
level and include instructions for action.
The
product includes a library of pre-programmed
audio-visual signals for numerous alert scenarios. Such
signals cover FPCON commands, watches, warnings, battle
staff directives and other federal, Department of
Defense (DoD), USAF and AETC-specific emergency
notifications.
AtHoc IWSAlerts is based on the
AtHoc Enterprise Notifications Suite, an
enterprise-class, commercial-off-the-shelf software
running on a Microsoft platform. AtHoc IWSAlerts has
received Defense Information Technology Security
Certification and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP)
certification and possesses the Certification to Operate
(CTO) and Approval to Operate (ATO) on AETC's network.
AETC began deploying AtHoc IWSAlerts at its
bases in 2005, including AETC Headquarters at Randolph
Air Force Base (AFB) and Vance AFB. Vance AFB has
already integrated the network alerting system with its
outdoor sirens, so it can launch alerts through the
siren and over the network with a single push of a
button. Each deployment has been completed and declared
operational within less than three days.
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Conclusion |
AETC bases - Randolph AFB and
Vance AFB - can now use AtHoc IWSAlerts to contact their
staff about pending threats in an average of one minute.
AtHoc IWSAlerts is helping these bases comply with Air
Force-specific requirements for installation-wide
warning systems as outlined in AFI 10-2501, a mandatory
requirement for Full Spectrum Threat Response (FSTR)
Installation Warning Systems.
Additional AETC
bases, including Luke AFB and Sheppard AFB, have also
purchased the offering and are in process of
implementing the product.
Using AtHoc IWSAlerts
- a network-centric, highly-secure and scalable solution
for emergency notifications - AETC is dramatically
improving base emergency response readiness. By
selecting AtHoc IWSAlerts and leveraging its existing
network infrastructure - one of the base's most
pervasive assets - AETC has significantly increased the
likelihood all personnel will be prepared for
emergencies while keeping total cost and time of
deployment minimal.
With the successful
deployments at Randolph AFB and Vance AFB and upcoming
deployments at Luke AFB and Sheppard AFB, AETC is well
on its way toward creating a powerful, command-wide
alerting system.
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